Compare and Contrast
by Aperio
Summary: A quick trip into 1800s London, and a visit to the partyparlour of Almack's. Genfic, maybe a touch of romance, Rose/10.


Compare and Contrast

**Compare and Contrast**

"This thing doesn't even have a waist!" The statement was followed by a slight laugh.

"Yes it does!" Rose glared at him direfully. What did he know?

"It does NOT have a waist. If you think it has a waist, where is it?" As she finished her sentence, she twirled around slightly and indicated her hips. The Doctor leaned against the console, almost doubled over with suppressed laughter.

"That's it there!" He waved towards the general region of her bust. Rose stopped her wandering about the console room and looked at him with her lips slightly parted and a you've-got-to-be-joking expression on her face.

"Where?" she asked warily. The Doctor made one of his instant mood flicks and sobered enough to talk.

"Give me. A break. Rose Tyler! A lady not knowing what a waist is? That's the gathered bit under your-" He broke off suddenly. "Uh, eh, yes; just there."

Rose hadn't moved. She indicated the area under her bust line.

"They called this a waist? The hell that's a waist!" She read the answer in her friend's eyes.

Her own pair travelled down her body, following the graceful lines of the evening dress she was wearing. It was made of a dark red velvet, cut rather low around the neck, decorated about two small puff sleeves and falling in uninterrupted folds to just about her ankles from the disputed waist line that gathered just under her — umm.

The Doctor straightened suddenly and held a hand out to her. His coat was completely buttoned up, Rose realised, finally able to spare a glance for clothing other then her own. She hadn't seen him do that before.

"Well, the night's moving on and we haven't even been out yet! Come along, Rose Tyler." He rolled her name along his tongue, loving the feel of the syllables and his face splitting into one of his wide, boyish grins.

"Welcome to London again, Rose."

"Where — scrub that — when are we?"

"Oh," he drew that word out as well. He loved the sound of his own voice. He had changed, she realised again, feeling a slight pang as she missed well-known Northern accents. He didn't really have such an obvious accent these days.

"Early 1800s — sometime after the 1810s, somewhere before the late 1850s" He replied airily.

"In other words, you don't know!" Rose added, grinning cheekily with her tongue between her teeth.

They left the Tardis behind them in a slight gap between two houses. The Doctor was barely curbing the speed his long legs could set him along at, and Rose found herself slightly out of breath keeping up with him. Honestly! Running away from monsters was easier than just keeping pace with the man. Even more honestly, it was impossible to keep pace with the man.

They were walking down a cobbled road, narrow buildings either side facing directly onto the street with little or no gate or garden, and most rising two stories, spotted with narrow windows. Intermittent lampposts, evidently lit by hand, provided light. They certainly weren't electric.

Suddenly, though, he came to a halt and Rose felt a hand on her shoulder. Her lips parted slightly again as she realised what she was facing.

A mother huddled on the street, her arms drawing a small boy towards her. Both were dressed in minimal layers of clothing, what they had ragged. The woman's breath clouded the air in front of blued lips. Her child snuggled his head into her neck in an effort to keep warm.

As Rose watched, a small group of well-dressed people passed the pair. To her indignation, they barely seemed to notice them, and to her added horror one of the men, pausing in his conversation, used a cane he was carrying to push her slightly out of his path. The woman woke slightly and moved slowly out of the way, shivering as she went.

The party passed on. A muttered word of disgust echoed on the night air.

The Doctor looked down into Rose's eyes and smiled slightly, sadly.

"How could they just do that to the poor woman? Did you see their fancy clothes? They could have…" she broke off from her indignant diatribe and shook her head.

"What?" The Doctor spoke softly. The girl beside him swung her head back to gaze into his face.

"You come from a different time, Rose, you're not as likely to see people like that on your street. In your time there's provision for the poor, more equality. In this time there is less money to support people like that, and they became a part of life: something to be found down every back alley and in every poor slum. Society was less equal — there were the rich, the middle class and the poor, with wide division between each."

"But they could've — and why didn't the rich…" Her voice broke off, but he knew what she meant. His eyes met hers and she read in them that tired, knowing — even cynical background that was so often veiled by his enthusiasm. His childishness and seeming zest for life.

"Think again Rose Tyler, and put yourself in that place. If you passed a tired, cold and hungry woman in the street where you came from, would you have given her aid, or would you have passed on and thought it some one else's business?"

She tried to hold his gaze, but her eyes fell. She knew what she would have done in her old time and place.

"No. I — I'd've thought it was someone else's job to look after her, an' no problem of mine." Her eyes found the woman and her small boy, and her chin came up again.  
"At least, that's what I would've used to've done." Her voice was determined, and her amber eyes flashed.

The Doctor smiled, satisfaction in his face.

"I know, Rose," he said softly.

He passed forward beyond her, moving towards where the woman was miserably considering settling again. Rose watched his lithe figure, an odd feeling that was neither alert nor dreamlike settling over her. She had a feeling that this odd, relatively unimportant scene would stay in her memory.

The Doctor leant over the woman and her child. Her eyes met his slowly, disinterestedly, past caring. Rose saw his lips move and a hand dive into a pocket of his great coat, still buttoned over his chest and down his legs. He drew out a small purse.

As he handed the purse to the woman, Rose saw those terribly blue lips part, and the darkened eyes open in a sudden hope, hands clutching at the small boys shoulders. Before he turned back to Rose, he squatted slightly beside the boy and pulled a crumpled paper bag out of his capacious pocket, winking. Rose recognised a bag of jelly babies. They appeared intermittently, for reasons she had never managed to work out.

The last glimpse Rose ever caught of the woman was a picture of hope. Her lank hair hung around hollowed eyes, but the eyes contained a light of hope.

Silence reigned for an appreciable length of time as the pair continued walking.  
"There'll be a slight change in her conditions of living, at least." The Doctor suddenly said buoyantly. Rose, lacking his mercurial moods, wasn't as quick to change her humour.

"Until that purse runs out," she replied in a low voice.

This doleful pronouncement was met with a slight chuckle.

"I love dimensional transcendentalism," the Doctor replied, seemingly at random. His pace increased, as though to match his mood.

"Lovely hats, that woman makes. Or will, at any rate." He added, and turned his head towards his young friend.

"Now, Rose Tyler, we've done our good deed for the day, are you ready to go to a party?"

Her eyes lifted to his, and it was all the answer he needed. His hand gripped hers.

The ball was in full swing, couples twirling about the dance floor to a decent, if a bit too classical for Rose's taste, tune, and many more people about the edge of the room, talking and laughing with glasses of drink in hand.

The bouncer had looked strict, Rose reflected, and wondered where the Doctor had found the invitation. He had inquired after a Lady Jersey, a woman whose name had also appeared on the invitation.

She had asked the Doctor, privately of course, if they were at this Lady Jersey's ball. His eyes had widened at her.

"My dear Rose — haven't you ever heard of Almack's? Sally Jersey is simply one of the patronesses. Well! And an old friend of mine." His brows had drawn together. "I wonder if she'll be here tonight? I s'pose I'll have to say hello if she is."

"I thought you said she was a friend of yours?"

"Well, she is, but it is DEAD hard to get a word in edgeways when she's talking."

Rose had smothered a grin at that. Any woman who could out talk the Doctor would have to be garrulous indeed.

Almack's. From what she could gather it seemed to be a society gathering, particularly for young people accompanied by their parents. Or rather, their mothers. Plenty of dancing and light drinks, she added to that description as she looked around. Tea as well. No doubt that was where the Doctor had disappeared.

Society. And what a society! The room was full of twirling skirts, all brand new by the looks of them. The men were dressed more soberly, but something about them was excessively elegant. She compared them to the guys she was used to seeing and her eyebrows flew up. Guys from her day wouldn't be found dead in outfits like these. They preferred to look like something off the streets. Now here was a stylishness that a woman simply responded to — they looked good.

She smothered a grin as one of those pieces of 'elegance' passed her. There was still something to be said for guys that didn't go about looking like they had a bandage around their necks up to their chins, not to mention flowered waistcoats.

Or jewels all over their chest. She found her mind flicking back to that poor street girl, and felt an impotent rage flower inside her.

"It's very different, isn't it?" Asked a familiar voice behind her, making her start. How did he read her mind like that?

"Yeah," she replied, squashing growing suspicions of having a psychic friend. She heard that friend sigh.

"It won't change, and you couldn't change it without causing major problems in both history and society. It simply has to develop. Take the best away with you, Rose Tyler, and work to improve the worst."

She smiled slowly. No matter what he felt, no matter what the problem was, he always had that effect on her. She felt the rage dissolve, and optimism bubble. Her foot began to tap in time to the music, and a chuckle sounded from behind her.

"I thought as much. Rose Tyler, will you give me your hand for this dance?" The voice was suddenly plummy, imitating the haughty tones of the people around her.  
Rose turned, her lips parting to give a gracious and equally haughty reply, laughter in her eyes. And stopped.

The Doctor faced her, having abandoned his coat and dressed in what was, judging by the people around her, the height of fashion. His coat tails were long behind his back, a waistcoat peeping out under a short coat front. His breeches ended at the knee, revealing long silk stockings and black leather slippers. White material spilled from about his neck, in much the same, if a slightly lower, fashion as she had laughed at in the men about her.

Her eyes brimmed with laughter, echoing a slightly rueful expression in his own.

"They don't let you into Almack's if you're not dressed the part," he replied to the question in her face.

Rose bit her tongue, the suspicion of a blush entering her cheeks. He always managed to look so naturally good, no matter what he was wearing. Her eyes abruptly caught admiring looks thrown at him by other damsels, and she suddenly felt as though she were badly dressed. The colour didn't suit her, her hair was a mess and her mouth was too wide. At least she could've changed the first two.

The band struck a new tune. Before she could say anything, the Doctor's hand had grasped her wrist and he had led her onto the floor. She recognised the tune: her mum had been keen on dancing at one stage — although that hadn't lasted.

"This is a waltz, isn' it?" She asked the Doctor, surprised.

"Yep! The waltz has officially entered Almack's door."

And with that his hand grasped hers and his arm slipped about her waist. And those girls who had given the Doctor admiring looks were now giving her jealous ones. Maybe her hair wasn't such a mess after all.

She laughed. Compare and contrast: a poor girl and her child with a rich society, a past society with her own and a dozen beautiful ladies with shop girl Rose Tyler. But she was the one with the Doctor's arm about her waist being led gracefully around the dancefloor. He could dance this regeneration, too!

"What are you laughing at, Rose Tyler?" His grin was appreciative and knowing.

"I was thinking."

"Thinking what?"

She was whirled under his arm and brought back into his hold, her long skirt spinning about her legs gracefully. Her returning smile was saucy.

"I was thinkin' — you don't have a proper waist in that get-up neither!"

_  
So waddya think? I'd like to hear in your reviews what you think of the contrasts in the story, or if you think they weren't stated clearly. All comments appreciated! You can insult me if you like, as long as you've got a valid reason! ;) _


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